


maybe life is the evidence of our crimes

by Phaenna



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Addiction, Bit of character study, F/M, Gen, Self-Harm, Suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-09
Updated: 2019-04-12
Packaged: 2020-01-07 13:08:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,319
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18411290
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Phaenna/pseuds/Phaenna
Summary: She had carved in her body the consequences of her every sin, unbeknown to him. She'd been paying for the damage she had caused for so long that she'd grown to cherish her ability to let the guilt flood her veins and make its way out of them with a flick of her wrist and a tool used to heal others. If she was honest, it was like touching a blue sky they never thought they'd see.





	1. paying for sins I don't remember

**Author's Note:**

> [ **TRIGGER WARNING** : self-harm, alcohol use, painkiller addiction, suicidal ideation.]
> 
> I mean it. If you have ever dealt with self-harm or you're in risk atm, DON'T READ THIS. Trust me, don't. I wrote this after a couple of giant breakdowns and I know it WILL be triggering if you're experiencing the same things.  
> If you chose to read it, please know I didn't mean it as a glorification of self-harm of any kind at all. I know how it will sound, which is why I beg anyone doubting they can handle it to just don't read it. I'm not even sure why am I posting this besides keeping it real for myself and for a character I love. 
> 
> It is not beta-read and it's certainly a mess. If you still want to read after this, do it at your own risk. My Twitter account is on my profile if anyone ever needs help or just someone to listen. 
> 
> -Title from "Perdí la cuenta" by Benjamín Amadeo.

There once was a time in which her body was a canvas. Deep purple and red lines, strings of faded silver contouring the shape of her veins. She saw beauty in it, the story of herself, the past and present and future all on display, a physical manifestation of what she would never be able to put into words.

Abby Griffin has always been a brave woman. Her body doesn't bear the marks like it did before, some faded with time and some replaced by the circumstances of life on the ground. But she's grateful for them. It's oh so very different, and there's some underlying nostalgia in her heart when she picks up a recently-cleaned scalpel and doesn't feel the same urge as she did in the Ark. Nevertheless she knows it's there, buried deep under layers and layers of pain and sorrow and all the tears she has shed since coming down. Her only comfort is knowing that the minute it stops she will be right back at the beginning.

The pain felt different when she fell to Earth, raw and messy and the complete opposite of what she had been used to all her life. She cherished it anyway, embracing every wound in delicious agony. Scraped knees by walking on an unfamiliar terrain, after a life of flat surfaces she knew too well, bruises appearing in places she had never seen them in before, sunburns and seasonal allergies and all they never had experienced before. Even the heat of the shock baton on her lower back sent thrills up her spine that didn't have to do with the electric current passing through her body again, and again, and again.

There was no doubt she would never be able to live the way she had up there, to experience the same sensations and handle life the same way. Learning her own life anew, her instincts and responses, burying the yearning to go back in time to what she was used to. To be who she had been before the fall to Earth had made her lose a piece of herself she would never be able to find again.

Black and blue and white, dimmed lights faking night, a small office reeking of crappy alcohol that was enough to knock her out in a few sips, her desk dripping with the consequences of the sheer beauty her forearms had become.

One for every sharp pang of pain in her soul. One for every tear. One for every time her heart felt like it was about to come out of her chest, like it just wanted to throw itself out of an airlock and take her with it.

Living in a world that wasn't such, floating in the middle of the sky with nothing to do but survive, it was a relief to have an outlet for everything the future made her feel. Abby Griffin thrived being in control, but the prospect of living and dying inside that perfect little hell they had created for themselves made her blood boil, her heart pumping it through her veins and making it drip on the floor. Back then, she would've done everything to give away that control over her own future and change it, give everyone a chance to change and do better. Only a year after that, she can only laugh bitterly at how stupid that thought had been.

Up there, she used to smile with every little nick, every sharp delicate line across her pale skin. Watching closely how silver turned to dark pink, and how it opened up with a second drag of the blade to give way to little drops of the most beautiful shade of red. It always felt like a miracle, something she would do over and over again just so she could have the privilege of admiring it.

Down on Earth, that pleasant aesthetic her own injuries gave way to had been exchanged for brutally grotesque paintings on her skin, a perfect mirror of their new life. Irregular pieces of scrap metal rescued from the wreckage of the Ark digging into her legs with a force she wasn't used to, compared to the delicate drag of a scalpel across that same patch of skin. Long, uneven nails digging into the palms of her hands and scratching the scab of her cuts so hard it becomes red and messy and draws blood all over again. Moonshine confiscated from the kids being hidden in her own room, her own body, hitting her head onto the wall over and over again as the only way she can dull the splitting headaches that wake her up as soon as the sun rises in the sky.

It's different but she welcomes it, if only because it's the only thing she has available to make her feel like she's back home.

 

* * *

 

_"We have to answer for our sins, Abby."_

_"After everything we've done, do we even deserve to survive?"_

She had carved in her body the consequences of her every sin, unbeknown to him. She'd been paying for the damage she had caused for so long that she'd grown to cherish her ability to let the guilt flood her veins and make its way out of them with a flick of her wrist and a tool used to heal others. If she was honest, it was like touching a blue sky they never thought they'd see.

It hadn't taken long for him to find out, to realize the exact way she had been coping with life, to kiss her every scar under candlelight and furs, to try and heal a soul that had been lost way before he had become a constant in her life. Abby can't blame him for trying, pity in her eyes every time she watches him treat her battered body like a shrine, expecting a change that would never come. She had lived all of that with Jake for the longest time, and even then every look of sympathy and hope sent her straight into her office where the cycle would start all over again.

Men won't save her. Love won't heal her. Self-inflicted pain won't make reality better, but if someone ever asked her, she'd swear having control over her own suffering is better than waiting for it to wash over her all at once. As a doctor, she'd be floated if she dared to say that outloud. As a mother, she expects to bear her daughter's pain and guilt in her own skin. As a lover, she can only be honest enough to admit reaching pleasure through pain is the only way she can ever let go.

As Abby Griffin, she shrugs and goes on with her life like usual, day after day, ignoring the way her thighs sometimes bleed through her pants and the uncomfortable long-sleeves in hot temperatures stick to her recently-injured arms making her skin burn and itch all over again.

 

* * *

 

 

Throughout her life, Abby has never been afraid of pain. She has run towards it head-on at times, the excuses of saving someone holding the same amount of truth as the things she would never say: she needs it. Needs it like air to breathe or the pills she found would make life much more bearable.

If someone asked, painkillers had begun as a respite from the splitting headaches caused by brain damage, and after a certain point she just couldn't stop. In reality, she doesn't understand how not even Marcus realizes the underlying reason for that need.

She doesn't take them to stop a pain she would otherwise relish in. She deserves it, no matter what anyone else says. She needs the pain and the guilt and every single memory intact, because that is the only way she knows of cleaning her sins and attoning for every life she has ruined. But her hands shake every time she treats a patient, and the headaches blind her for seconds in the end while she's right in the middle of procedures, and she cannot risk having yet another person's blood in her hands. Not after everything they had had to do to earn the much undeserved spot underground.

The Bunker's medbay is well-stocked, and one pill per day doesn't feel like she's taking much away from her patients. She's only doing it for them, and even if she doesn't believe it much herself, she will stop once the side effects of ALIE's damage in her brain have passed. It allows her to focus, to take her mind away from the pain she otherwise couldn't control, and direct her every thought to what has always been familiar.

Days turn into weeks, weeks turn into months, and she's nearing an entire year in which control of her own life is slipping through her fingers in a way she had never experienced before.

Jackson and Niylah had spent most part of the week speaking to Marcus behind her back, and it's beyond her if they actually think they're being secretive or if they are counting on her to get angry about it. A last desperate attempt to bring her back, out of that numb and empty version of herself she has become.

She has tried to stop before, a handful of times during the past few months alone, but none of the different approaches they've taken has had any result. So now that they had taken her pills away to test just how much time can she last, she's trying to hold her ground out of sheer determination not to let them see her crack.

The symptoms never come all at once, creeping in slowly but surely until she's retching, slumped over the toilet and struggling to breathe. It's nothing she cannot handle, but the hot-and-cold sensations expanding from her torso to the rest of her body, the chills and tremors and the sensation of walking on clouds all the time are driving her crazy. The world around her blurs both in her eyes and in her mind, all her senses unattuned with her surroundings and her thoughts slowing but coming all at once at the same time.

It upsets her to no end, the way every bit of control over her own body is slipping away and she cannot fix it. Not even red thighs and sticky arms evoke the same things they did before, and it's hard to reconcile _this_ with the Abby she has always been. Everything is numb, mind and body and soul, and however much she tries she cannot swim back to the surface to fill her lungs with what she needs to survive these five years underground.

It's been a year and she needs to stop. She needs to go back to herself and get rid of this crap that's making her lose the little bit of self-control she had left.

Deep down, however, she has always known it: she can't. She's not strong enough, no matter how everyone else sees her. She doesn't have it in her to push her own recovery for her own sake, because she doesn't deserve it. And that she cannot say, cannot trust anyone enough to admit it out of a life-threatening situation. And if this is one of those… Maybe she'll go without saying it at all.

They don't need to know it, she's doing it for their own benefit, and however hard it is to lie and say otherwise, to hide her motives and the cause of her struggles, it's all for them. She cannot save herself, but maybe she can guard their hearts a little for when she's not able to protect them anymore.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I love Abby Griffin with my whole heart and I don't necessarily agree with everything she shows or thinks about herself in this fic. I just needed to get this out of my system and keep it as real as I could, but in no way this is either an agreement on what she does, or a stand on whether people in her same position deserve it. No one ever does, so please don't take it any other way than what it is: her own (somewhat twisted or misguided) thoughts about herself.


	2. one burial after another

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Trigger warnings from the first part still apply.]
> 
> A slight spoiler warning for 601: I haven't watched it so it's only based on the recounting of a scene between Abby and Raven. I doubt that's how it's going to play out in the episode but I thought I'd mention it anyway. 
> 
> -both chapter titles belong to rupi kaur poems.

Raven walks into the med bay to find Abby eyeing the medicine cabinet with something in her eyes she knows too damn well. It is the same look of longing she'd seen throughout her entire childhood, and no, no, no, she can't do it all over again. The dread, the waiting, the coming home every night half-expecting her nightmares to come true in the form of a lifeless body on the floor, surrounded by vomit and every single one of Raven's dreams shattered to pieces.

She scoffs, fuming, and Abby raises her head to find the girl staring at her from the doorway. They haven't seen much of each other since that horrifying moment, not alone at least, and all of a sudden words are coming out of Abby's mouth as fast as tears run down her cheeks. She isn't expecting forgiveness by any stretch of the imagination: her words are not excuses or explanations but a sincere apology for something that has been making her rot inside ever since it happened. 

However, nothing had prepared her for the words that would come out of the girl's mouth.

"Don't," Raven says the minute she mentions the shock-collar, absentmindedly tracing her fingers over burns not yet healed. "Don't you even dare. What's done is done." Cold, bitter, resentful. Everything Abby knew it would be. She's ready, she has accepted it, she deserves it.

"I know," she sighs wearily, shame and pain and the desire to wrap the girl in her arms and take away all the pain both she and her own mother had caused. Nothing she can say could ever take her actions back, nothing she can do could ever make her trust her again.

Raven doesn't answer, fire in her eyes, and walks towards the same cabinet she found Abby staring at. Fuming, she rummages through it until she finds what she's looking for: a tiny pill bottle with a tag they both know too well. It all happens so fast that it takes Abby by surprise when the bottle hits her shoulder and she grabs it on instinct before it clatters to the floor, not even having to check to know what they are.

"Go on," Raven's mirthless laugh is like a slap across the face. It hurts and burns, making her dizzy. "We both know you won't last much longer. Better make it quick and just get over it." With every word the knife goes deeper and deeper inside her heart, twisting and dragging across arteries and veins and every bit of life it finds in its way. "Maybe this time you'll be lucky enough and finally end up like my mother."

Turning to the door without even glancing in her direction, Raven says one last thing before slamming the door shut. The words eat away at Abby for seconds, minutes, hours. It's nothing she hadn't thought of herself before, something she was still convinced was the truth however much it hurt, but hearing Raven say it so clearly, certain she was right about it, settled it for her. 

_"We will all be better off when it finally happens."_

 

* * *

 

 

With Marcus in cryo again –" _You couldn't even save him_ ", her treacherous brain reminds her– and Diyoza laboring on the other room, Abby can't help but eye the bottle Raven had thrown in her rage. It's still on her desk, untouched since the moment the girl had left three days ago, but everything in her is fighting not to open it and drown the screams inside her head with pretty white pills able to make it all better. 

"I don't know" had been her words to Clarke barely a week ago — centuries. And she truly hadn't had the slightest idea back then, it all had taken her by surprise as much as her daughter. Now, she can't help but breathe in a feeling she hasn't felt in years. Paying for her sins, seeking forgiveness by kneeling down and accepting with glee the sword across her throat. By her own hand, no less. 

But she can't, she promised to herself. With Jackson and Clarke down there, she's the only person properly trained to deal with major medical issues, and the minute they had all gone she knew she couldn't leave them all to die. Not yet, not _them_.

"Fuck off," she whispers to her brain, as if in doing so she could drown the unhelpful remarks it was making about saving the man she loves. He's safe for now, sleeping peacefully and perfectly conserved inside a pod, waiting for the moment he could be saved all over again. Everyone else is up and about, minor injuries that could wait to be dealt with, or that could heal on their own. No one would die if she just…

Diyoza screams from the other room, and Abby reminds herself once more of her promise.

 

* * *

 

 

A purple little infant crying in her arms, Abby smiles for the first time in what seems like years. Maybe it has been. Diyoza is sweating, wild eyes shining bright at the sight of her daughter, a little shred of hope making its way into a world of pain and misery. 

"Congratulations," Abby forces herself to choke out, putting the baby on her mother's chest and letting Niylah focus on it while she finishes her job between her legs. 

It's been a long while since she's helped anyone give birth, and it's funny how much she hadn't missed it, the prospect of welcoming an innocent life into such a Hell. It doesn't matter if there's a new world waiting for them down there, their history has never been nice to them before and Abby can't be sure things will ever change in the future. She's seen way too much destruction in the way of life to let herself believe in second - or third chances. 

But for this moment, a little pocket in time in which all they have is new life in the form of a wailing baby, she could be persuaded. She could try again, for Hope, for all the chances she never got. 

 

* * *

 

 

It doesn't take her long to escape to her little office while everyone else sleeps or is doing late-night rounds. Less people on the ship only means more time to herself, and after everything that had happened since they all woke up, Abby needs rest… And she only knows one way to get enough peace of mind to close her eyes and sleep of her own accord for the first time in years.

Scalpel hidden inside her sleeve, she closes her office door and isn't expecting the sight that welcomes her even when she had been the one to leave it that way. The bottle is still on her desk, closed and untouched but it could as well have a neon sign saying OPEN ME because Abby all but runs towards it, the door slamming shut behind her, and opens it with the fervor of a man running towards an oasis in the middle of the desert. 

With that, the tiny piece of flitting optimism vanishes as if it had never been there. 

What she's done doesn't dawn on her until more pills than she can count are down her throat and her heart's wild pace slows to the same gentle rhythm that used to get her daughter to sleep an entire galaxy away. It slows, and slows, and slows… 

Something in the back of her mind tells her she needs to do something about it, but she can't even bring herself to take a deep breath and stand up again. When did she fall to the floor? The chair's legs are right next to her head and that's the last thing she sees before closing her eyes, exhaustion filling every inch of her body. 

She's dizzy, her mind spinning and body floating in the air, all her senses disappearing one after another, until there's nothing left of her but her slowly-fading consciousness. 

She was born in the sky and lived most of her life with the security that she was going to die there as well. The last thought on her mind before darkness surrounds her is that she's glad she was right in the end.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you're an optimist, let's say Niylah found Abby right in time and saved her life. 
> 
> If, like me, you prefer a more realistic take on it… I'm not gonna lie. I've been in that situation so many different times it's hard to believe there's actually any hope left to have.
> 
> Maybe Abby can't be saved, maybe she can. But please, if you ever find yourself in a similar situation, **always** seek help as long as it's possible. If you see someone else in Abby's shoes, don't leave them alone. You might be of more help than you realize.
> 
> A little note to say that I don't agree by any means with anything Raven said, and that however you feel about a person, you should never imply such thing to them. You never know what they're dealing with, and it only takes a couple of words to tip a person over the edge. 
> 
> I didn't write this in my best moments, so I truly apologize for the mess it was, and for the things that are surely making no sense. Thanks for reading.


End file.
